One Step Too Far Read Free

doll’s house at the far end of the room, by the patio doors. This was Emily’s favourite toy, but it was not exclusively hers – like most of her things it had to be shared, and Caroline loved to move all the furniture into the wrong rooms, or even worse take it out altogether for the dog to eat. Caroline followed her over and said coaxingly, “Let’s play teddies,” and so Emily agreed although she didn’t entirely trust Caroline’s motives, and they'd set up their teddies for a tea party and even played quite nicely for a few minutes. Just as Caroline had tired of their half-game and stalked off to the kitchen to find her father, Emily heard a car pull up in front of the garage that formed the left side of the chalet-style house.
    “Mummy!” Emily jumped off the couch and ran down the length of the living room as she heard her mother open the front door.
    Caroline was on her way back from the kitchen, where she’d helped herself to a malted milk biscuit from the metal tin in the cupboard next to the cooker. Her father had quickly got off the phone and let her have one, which had surprised her, it was nearly tea time. She’d just bitten the cow’s head off, planning to savour each body part, but now she crammed the rest of the biscuit into her mouth, eating urgently. As Caroline came into the hall wiping crumbs off her face she saw her twin hurtling down the lounge towards her, and her first instinct was to move, get out the way.
    “Hello Mummy!” called Emily. Frances was putting down her shopping, ready to open her arms to both her daughters. But when Caroline saw Emily’s joy and their mother’s reciprocity she wanted to shut the scene out, it made her feel cross for some reason. As Frances set the last bag down on the orange shag rug in the middle of the sunlit hall, she looked up and saw Caroline slam the lounge door shut, hard, at precisely the right moment. And then she saw Emily come tearing through the plate glass towards her, and she heard the sound of a bomb going off.
     
    Andrew had chased Caroline around the oval-shaped dining table whilst Frances picked shards of glass out of Emily’s face and arms and legs. Miraculously, Emily’s cuts were mostly superficial, but Caroline was still sent to her room until tea-time, despite Andrew trying to convince his wife that Caroline hadn’t realised what would happen – she was too young, he'd said, she can’t possibly have done it deliberately – and that they should let her come downstairs now. But Frances was unrelenting, she’d never been so furious in her life.
    Later Andrew hypothesised that it was only Emily’s speed at impact that saved her from Jeffrey Johnson’s fate, the boy four doors down who’d been left with a livid two inch scar on his cheek from a run-in with his own glass door. There was however one deeper cut on Emily’s knee which faded over time but failed to disappear completely, and she was never able to look at it without being reminded of her sister, and of course as she got older it reminded her of all the other things Caroline had done over the years, so the scar was much worse than it looked really. The Browns replaced the door with a wooden one after that, and although the living room was always that much darker, Frances felt happier that way.
     
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    At Euston the heat is still waiting for me as I step down from the carriage. The train is leaking people out onto the platform and everyone is rushing, busy, knowing where they’re going. I stop by a stanchion and remove my handbag from my armpit and shove it into my holdall, I can’t risk losing it. My clothes are too hot for the day ahead but I’m not changing now, I have too much to do – I have to buy a new phone, find somewhere to live, start my new life. I’m determined now. I refuse to think about Ben or my darling Charlie, I can’t think about them, about how they’ll be awake by now, will know I’ve gone. They have each other, they’ll cope, in